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A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child (film)
A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child is a 1989 film, and the sequel to ''A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master''. It was directed by Stephen Hopkins. The film's general tone is much more gothic and dark than the films before, and used a blue filter lighting technique in most of the scenes. It received overall mixed reviews from the critics and the fans, and was widely praised by the audiences for its gothic-style, making it into a horror classic. Plot Freddy Krueger manages to resurrect himself by being reborn in the form of a monstrous infant through the spirit of Amanda Krueger in Alice's dream, and in the church where Alice defeated him previously, returns to his original form. Alice and her boyfriend Dan are planning to go to Europe. While Dan drives home, he is pulled into the dream world (though Alice is awake) and attacked by Freddy. Eventually he rides a motorcycle away, and Freddy fuses him with the wires of the motorcycle, and forces him to crash into another truck (making him crash his truck in the real world, and making it appear as a regular car crash, the fragments of the bottle of champagne he had for Alice making some suspect he was driving drunk). At the hospital, Alice is informed that she is pregnant. She often has dreams about a young boy named Jacob, but there were no children on the floor. Alice informs her new friends, Greta Gibson (a supermodel in training), Yvonne (a future Olympic diver), and Mark Grey (a comic geek) about Freddy. One night, at dinner, while Alice is awake, Greta is pulled into the dream world and killed by Freddy, who stuffs food in her mouth and throws her in the fridge. Yvonne refuses to believe Freddy exists, but Mark, on the other hand, finds it odd that two of them died around the same time. Soon, Mark is attacked by Freddy, who tries to drop him down a bottomless pit. After Alice saves him, he does some research on Freddy. She also discovers that Jacob is her unborn child, and Freddy is using his dreams to pull his victims into the dream world for him. Mark tells Alice that, according to his research, Amanda Krueger hung herself after Freddy's trial, but no body was found, and that she must be released from her earthly resting place in the tower of Westin Hills Asylum. Yvonne is pulled into the dream world and attacked by Freddy, but he is stopped when Alice stabs him in the mouth with a pipe, and refuses to go into the next room because he is afraid of Amanda. Yvonne is now convinced of Freddy's existence. Mark is pulled into the dream world, and Freddy sucks him into his comic book where he slashes him to bits. Alice's father (who is no longer drinking as much) takes her home, so she tells Yvonne to go to the asylum and release Amanda's spirit from the tower. She then enters the dream world and fights off Freddy, impaling him on spikes and throwing him into a room full of a hundred maniacs. They attack him and tear his arm off, but his arm suddenly turns into tarantulas. Eventually Freddy disappears, and Jacob tells Alice that Freddy is hiding inside her, which is how he found Jacob. Alice drives Freddy out, but becuase of the strong pain, she loses her stength to fight back. Yvonne, meanwhile, enters the tower and releases Amanda's spirit, where she enters the dream world and tells Jacob that Alice will not triumph and he must use his power on Freddy. Jacob shoots what appears to be a tongue beam at Freddy, and the souls of Dan, Greta, and Mark are released, and Freddy is turned back into an infant, as is Jacob. Freddy and Jacob are absorbed by Amanda and Alice, respectively. Alice walks through a door into a light as Freddy attempts to claw his way out, and the church doors close. After a year, Alice has given birth to Jacob, and they are finally at peace from the nightmares. However, while they are having a picnic with Yvonne and Mr. Johnson, the children (who are the omens of Freddy's presence) singing "One, two, Freddy's coming for you" can be seen next to them. Main Cast Robert Englund as Freddy Krueger Lisa Wilcox as Alice Johnson Beatrice Boepple as Amanda Krueger Whit Hertford as Jacob Johnson Kelly Jo Minter as Yvonne Miller Danny Hassel as Dan Jordan Erika Anderson as Greta Gibson Nicholas Mele as Dennis Johnson Joe Seely as Mark Gray Box Office The Dream Child was released on August 11th, 1989 on 1,902 theatres in North America. On the first weekend, the film grossed $8,115,176 as the 3rd highest grossing film of that week, falling behind Parenthood ($9,672,350) and James Cameron’s Abyss ($9,319,797). The film ranked No.8 at the second weekend box office with a box office performance of $3,584,320, and it dropped out from the Top 10 list ranked as No.11 and No.14 on the third and the forth weekend. Finally, the film took a box office success with a domestic total of $22,168,359. Though this makes it the 8th highest but also the second lowest grossing Nightmare on Elm Street film, but equals 4 times the budget, which making it quite successful. The film ranked No.43 of the Top 50 highest domestic grossing films, and also the highest grossing horror-slasher film of the year 1989. Critical Reception A Nightmare on Elm Street 5: The Dream Child received generally mixed reviews from the critics. Most of the comments praise the film’s gothic styles and eye-popping special effects, but panned its plot idea and some absurd sene. Although Robert Englund ranked the film as his personal least favorite Nightmare on Elm Street films after negative reviewed Freddy’s Revenge in his book “Hollywood Monsters”, he gives the film a positive review in the documentary Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy, he says: “…Nightmare on Elm Street 5 was a success…; Stephen did a lot of perfect jobs.” On Nightmare on Elm Street Films official website, Lisa Wilcox, the actress who portrayed Alice Johnson in the film, repeat the question asked by the fans: “...NOES 5 was much darker, literally and figuratively. The lighting was darker and the subject matters were heavier too-like abortion, teen motherhood, drinking and driving, bulimia, anorexia…Perhaps it was too much for a NOES film to handle. Thus, the film hit nerves too close to society home and therefore not as entertaining…” and she gives the film a positive review in the interview, “…5 brought up interesting issues regarding teen pregnancy and rights of a mother.” On Rotten Tomatoes, It holds an overall score of 31% “rotten” on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 28 professional reviews. Though few of the audiences believes the film is one of the weakest Nightmare on Elm Street sequel, most of the fans give the film a fair-minded comments, which isn’t as perfect as the Dream Warrior and the Dream Master, but still excellent and worth-seeing, and some of them think it is one of the best Nightmare on Elm Street films, which finally makes The Dream Child into a horror classic. Category:Films